Mother Bear's Lament

A couple of years ago, I joined a women's poetry group that meets at my church, Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio. This group of wonderful people meets monthly under the wise and compassionate leadership of Mary Anne Woodward. It is a wonderfully safe setting in which to give expression to my feelings about all kinds of things. One Saturday last April, I wrote this during a meeting of the group.

Mother Bear’s Lament

Breathing in...
Breathing out...
Easy for us to say,

But when your lungs don’t work so well,
you find other ways to breathe.

You breathe in Spirit
and breathe out images
poems
stories
games
memories
jokes—
and splash them across a Facebook page.

I watch in awe,
tears streaming down my face,
grateful for each breath in
and each breath out,
yet raging against the struggle
each breath demands of him.

Like a fierce mother bear,
I growl and extend my claws
to protect my cub,
but there’s nothing for my claws to tear into.
They have no power against the disease
that chokes his lungs.


Charlotte Nichols
April 25, 2009

Last June, my friend Margaret introduced me to the making of mandalas as a spiritual practice. At the time, my son Darryl was in the hospital for a "cleanout", a term used by CF patients to describe the process of being hospitalized, often for several weeks, for intensive IV antibiotic therapy. This is necessary for many CF patients because the mucous in their lungs is abnormally thick, which makes the lungs an ideal breeding ground for hostile bacteria. Repeated bouts of pneumonia cause increasing damage to the lungs, which ultimately leads to death. A reprieve can come in the form of a double lung transplant, which can add years to the patient's life and substantially improve the quality of life. This is, of course, a high-risk course of action which is only undertaken when it looks like the patient could only live another year or two without it.

Last June, Darryl's doctors did not think he was quite to that point, but it was becoming clear that the time for that momentous decision was drawing nearer. I was frightened and struggling to come to terms with all that was happening to Darryl. So I took out my recently purchased markers and sketchpad and drew this mandala. Around the mandala, I wrote this prayer:

May the strength and wisdom of Mother Bear be mine today. I call upon the earth to ground me. I call upon the tree reaching up to the light to lift my aspirations. May it be so.

That was a year ago. And now the time has come for Darryl to be placed on the waiting list for new lungs. Hope and fear constantly compete for my attention. Most days, hope has the upper hand, but when fear arises, I find strength in this image and this prayer.